the answer to the tender inquiries of his anxious friends was, that Mr. Rogers was as well as could be expected.
It used to be very amusing in London to see Rogers with his fidus Achates, Luttrell. They were inseparable, though rival wits, and constantly saying bitter things to each other. Luttrell was the natural son of Lord Carhampton, Commander-in-Chief in Ireland, and in his youth known as the famous Colonel Luttrell of Junius. I consider him to have been the most agreeable man I ever met. He was far more brilliant in conversation than Rogers; and his animated, bustling manner formed an agreeable contrast with the spiteful calmness of his corpse-like companion. He was extremely irritable, and even passionate; and in his moments of anger he would splutter and stutter like a maniac in his anxiety to give utterance to the flow of thoughts which crowded his mind, and, I might almost say, his mouth.
On one occasion the late Lady Holland took him a drive in her carriage over a rough road, and, as she was very nervous, she insisted on being driven at a foot's pace. This ordeal lasted some hours, and when he was at last released, poor Luttrell, perfectly exasperated, rushed into the nearest club-house, and exclaimed, clenching his teeth and hands, "The very funerals passed us!"
THE PIG-FACED LADY
[Sidenote: Captain Gronow]
Among the many absurd reports and ridiculous stories current in former days, I know of none more absurd or more ridiculous than the general belief of everybody in London, during the winter of 1814, in the existence of a lady with a pig's face. This interesting specimen of porcine physiognomy was said to be the daughter of a great lady residing in Grosvenor Square.
It was rumoured that during the illuminations which took place to celebrate the peace, when a great crowd had assembled in Piccadilly and St. James's Street, and when carriages could not move on very rapidly, horresco referens! an enormous pig's snout had been seen protruding from a fashionable-looking bonnet in one of the landaus which were passing. The mob cried out, "The pig-faced lady! Stop the carriage—stop the carriage!" The coachman, wishing to save his bacon, whipped his horses, and drove through the crowd at a tremendous pace; but it was said that the coach had been seen to set down its monstrous load in Grosvenor Square.
Another report was also current. Sir William Elliot, a youthful baronet, calling one day to pay his respects to the great lady in Grosvenor Square, was ushered into a drawing-room, where he found a person fashionably dressed, who, on turning towards him, displayed a hideous pig's face. Sir William, a timid young gentleman, could not refrain from uttering a shout of horror, and rushed to the door in a manner the reverse of polite; when the infuriated lady or animal, uttering a series of grunts, rushed at the unfortunate baronet as he was retreating, and inflicted a severe wound on the back of his neck. This highly improbable story concluded by stating that Sir William's wound was a severe one, and had been dressed by Hawkins, the surgeon, in St. Audley Street.
I am really almost ashamed to repeat this absurd story; but many persons now alive can remember the strong belief in the existence of the pig-faced lady which prevailed in the public mind at the time of which I speak. The shops were full of caricatures of the pig-faced lady, in a poke bonnet and large veil, with "A pig in a poke" written underneath the print. Another sketch represented Sir William Elliot's misadventure, and was entitled, "Beware the pig-sty!"
HOBY, THE BOOTMAKER, OF ST. JAMES'S STREET
[Sidenote: Captain Gronow]
Hoby was not only the greatest and most fashionable bootmaker in London, but, in spite of the old adage, ne sutor ultra crepidam, he employed his spare time with considerable success as a Methodist preacher at Islington. He was said to have in his employment three hundred workmen; and he was so great a man in his own estimation that he was apt to take rather an insolent tone with his customers. He was, however, tolerated as a sort of privileged person, and his impertinence was not only overlooked but was considered as rather a good joke. He was a pompous fellow, with a considerable vein of sarcastic humour.
I remember Horace Churchill (afterwards killed in India with the rank of major-general), who was then an ensign in the Guards, entering Hoby's shop in a great passion, saying that his boots were so ill made that he should never employ Hoby for the future. Hoby, putting on a pathetic cast of countenance, called to his shopman:
"John, close the shutters. It is all over with us. I must shut up shop;
Ensign Churchill withdraws his custom from me."
Churchill's fury can be better imagined than described.
On another occasion the late Sir John Shelley came into Hoby's shop to complain that his top-boots had split in several places. Hoby quietly said:
"How did that happen, Sir John?"
"Why, in walking to my stables."
"Walking to your stables!" said Hoby, with a sneer. "I made the boots for riding, not walking."
Hoby was bootmaker to the Duke of Kent; and, as he was calling on H.R.H. to try on some boots, the news arrived that Lord Wellington had gained a great victory over the French army at Vittoria. The duke was kind enough to mention the glorious news to Hoby, who coolly said:
"If Lord Wellington had had any other bootmaker than myself he never would have had his great and constant successes; for my boots and prayers bring his lordship out of all his difficulties."
One may well say that there is nothing like leather; for Hoby died worth a hundred and twenty thousand pounds.
Hoby was bootmaker to George III., the Prince of Wales, the royal dukes, and many officers in the Army and Navy. His shop was situated at the top of St. James's Street, at the corner of Piccadilly, next to the Old Guards Club. He was bootmaker to the Duke of Wellington from his boyhood, and received innumerable orders in the duke's handwriting, both from the Peninsula and France, which he always religiously preserved. Hoby was the first man who drove about London in a tilbury. It was painted black, and drawn by a beautiful black cob. This vehicle was built by the inventor, Mr. Tilbury, whose manufactory was, fifty years back, in a street leading from South Audley Street into Park Street.
HARRINGTON HOUSE AND LORD PETERSHAM
[Sidenote: Captain Gronow]
When our army returned to England in 1814 my young friend, Augustus Stanhope, took me one afternoon to Harrington House, in Stable-yard, St. James's, where I was introduced to Lord and Lady Harrington, and all the Stanhopes. On entering a long gallery, I found the whole family engaged in their sempiternal occupation of tea-drinking. Neither in Nankin, Pekin, nor Canton was the teapot more assiduously and constantly replenished than at this hospitable mansion. I was made free of the corporation, if I may use the phrase, by a cup being handed to me; and I must say that I never tasted any tea so good before or since.
As an example of the undeviating tea-table habits of the house of Harrington, General Lincoln Stanhope once told me that, after an absence of several years in India, he made his reappearance at Harrington House, and found the family, as he had left them on his departure, drinking tea in the long gallery. On his presenting himself, his father's only observation and speech of welcome to him was, "Hallo, Linky, my dear boy! delighted to see you. Have a cup of tea?"
LORD ALVANLEY
[Sidenote: Captain Gronow]
From the time of good Queen Bess, when the English language first began to assume somewhat of its present form, idiom, and mode of expression, to the day of our most gracious sovereign Queen Victoria, every age has had its punsters, humorists,
